The Transient Aurora

Just as bright auroras come and go in the night sky, major auroral displays flit in and out among the years according to the prevalence of spots on the sun. Those persons living at moderate latitudes in the time from about 1640 to 1720 had little chance to see Northern Lights simply because very few of significance occurred.

The whole of the eighteenth century was a good time for auroras. Even then, because of the 11-year cycle of solar activity, some years were better than others. Auroral observing was not quite so rewarding for most at the outset of the 1800s, but it improved during the last half of that century, peaking in about 1870.

Surprisingly enough, records of sunspot activity show that the Klondike Goldrush era, 1896 to 1902, was a low time for the aurora. Nevertheless, the people who wintered over in Dawson, the Fortymile or other northern gold camps saw plenty of aurora. Robert Service certainly saw enough to cause him to spice up many of his poems with allusions to the aurora.

Except for the ups and downs of the 11-year sunspot cycle, aurora watching got steadily better up until the fantastic winter of 1957-58, the time known as the International Geophysical Year because of intensive studies established worldwide during those years. That was a great year; night after night bright auroras flashed across the Alaskan-Yukon sky and sometimes spread as far south as Cuba. If the trends continue as they have for the past four centuries the world will not be treated to the equal of the 1957-58 auroral grandeur before about the middle of the 21st century. Even so, one of the happinesses of living in the north is that the major variations in auroral activity--the 11-year cycle and longer cycles--are not obvious to us. Those living at more lowly latitudes see few if any auroras during the off parts of the cycles, but we still can observe auroras in central and northern Alaska and Yukon on essentially every clear, dark night.